Vocabulary Lessons
by DreadNot
Summary: “Oh, my identity is not at all ambiguous, Angel. Not at all.” Dawn era. Alucard and Walter banter over schoolwork. Unambiguously slashy. Today's lesson Dutch.
1. English

_A/N: This is set in The Dawn era, which means Girlycard and young!Walter. This also contains a bit of slashyness. If that squicks you, now is definitely the time to hit the back button on your browser. This was written for LJ_'_s medusa2005, who requested Dawn era Walter and Alucard and the use of the word _"_epicene._"

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A hand flipped Walter's book shut and Walter gave a grunt of exasperation. He looked up at the hand's owner, knowing exactly who it was. "What do you want, Alucard? I have schoolwork or my tutor is going to have my ass." 

"Oh, we can't be having that, can we Walter?" Alucard gave the young butler a seductive look and batted his lashes.

"You know that Arthur says that it's not enough that I can kill for him. He says that the war won't go on forever and I have to find ways to be useful in peacetime." Walter wasn't overly thrilled by the prospect of more schoolwork, or truth be told, the prospect of peacetime. He was a child of an era of war and he was far better suited to blood and death than books and details.

Alucard put a finger under the boy's chin and turned his face up to his. "Shh, there's always time for study. How often do we have time to spend together when people aren't trying to kill you?"

"They're usually trying to kill you, too."

"Ah, but I'm not so easily killable." Walter watched Alucard's smile broaden and his dainty fangs showed at the corners of his mouth. There'd been a time when Walter had wondered why a creature as powerful as Alucard had chosen such a delicate form, but as he'd matured physically and mentally, he'd started to have an inkling.

The sort of thing he suspected Alucard wanted from him wasn't spoken of in polite society, but Walter didn't spend as much time in polite society as he did in the impolite company of other killers. Alucard kept his visible age very close to Walter's and was always willing to give the young man whatever sort of companionship he needed at any given time. Recently Walter had begun waking in the middle of the night from dreams in which Alucard was giving him some very particular companionship. It made looking the vampire in the face immediately afterward very difficult, particularly since Alucard always seemed to give him a knowing smile that said he knew exactly what had been in Walter's dreams.

He re-opened his book and began writing once more. He grimaced when Alucard's slender hand closed the book again.

"What is so interesting that you can't give your friend your attention?" When Walter looked up, Alucard's face was a picture of upset in the face of rejection.

"Alucard, I'm young, not dumb. Stop trying to make me feel bad for ignoring you. You know how Arthur is about my education."

Alucard took the page away from Walter before he could begin writing again. "Vocabulary? I thought your command of English was rather thorough."

"It's good enough for yelling in the trenches, but Arthur wants me to be the perfect butler, not just the good one I am now. He thinks that the perfect butler should be able to answer any question about anything at any time." He sighed. "Which means that among other things, he wants me to be a walking dictionary."

"Then allow me to assist you that you may finish more quickly and join me for some fun. What is rodomontade?"

Walter sighed again but decided to play along, "What I heard from the Major right before he ran like a coward – a pretentious speech."

"Sobriquet?"

"A nickname, like 'Angel of Death' or 'The Impaler.'" Walter grimaced at Alucard. Couldn't he just leave Walter be to get this done with?

"Lubricious? Oh Arthur does choose some interesting vocabulary for you."

"It means lewd, but it can also mean slippery or smooth."

"And can you give a real life example?"

"I could, but I prefer not to. You forgot 'epicene' from the list."

"Epicene? Ah, yes. And it means?" Alucard looked up from the page and fluttered his eyelashes at Walter.

"I'd think you'd be intimately acquainted with its meaning, Alucard. It means effeminate or having an ambiguous sexual identity."

"Oh, my identity is not at all ambiguous, Angel. Not at all." Alucard smiled invitingly, "Would you like me to prove it?"

Walter snatched the piece of paper out of Alucard's hands. "Maybe another time. I'm busy right now."


	2. French

"Are you busy now, Angel?"

"Why is it that you always wish to interrupt my studies?" The young man looked away from his books and flipped the cover of the dictionary closed.

Alucard blinked his large red eyes at Walter and smiled. "Because it's boring to watch you look at books. There must be _something_ more interesting we could be doing."

Walter stood up and looked down at the tiny vampire. In the year since the end of the war, he had grown taller, although no less wiry, but Alucard, of course, had not changed at all.

Walter, of all people, knew better than to allow Alucard's current physical appearance lull him into a false sense of security. That small body contained an almost incomprehensible amount of power.

At sixteen, Hellsing's young butler had seen far more than most men twice his age. He knew that Alucard knew that Walter found the tiny, rather feminine guise attractive. For several years he had rebuffed the vampire's subtle and not-so-subtle advances, but it seemed to get more difficult to do so with each passing year. There were times when he wondered why he bothered saying no – Alucard could not make him a vampire, was constrained by the seals against making ghouls, and honestly, Walter had more in common with him than he did with anyone remotely close to his own age.

"Right, then, if you're bored, I'm studying French vocabulary. You may help me with the list that Arthur gave me. I'm having some trouble finding translations for some of them."

Alucard picked up the page and looked at the blank spaces. Walter rolled his eyes at the grin that slowly spread on the vampire's face. "I remember this list," he looked away from the page and smirked at the young man, "and Arthur's very interesting word choices. And now he has you moving on to French?"

Alucard looked up at the tall youth and smirked even more broadly, "I thought he'd have you learning Greek by now."

"Can you help me with this or not? You've eaten enough Frenchmen by now to have a fairly comprehensive vocabulary."

"Rodomontade." Alucard's tongue, kitten pink, flicked out over his lower lip for a moment. "We haven't seen a good rodomontade since Poland, have we?"

"I don't think there is such a thing as a good rodomontade. Do you know the French for it or not?"

"Tsh. So impatient. I know you're better at waiting than that." He handed the page back to Walter and gestured toward his pencil. "The word is 'fanfaronnade.' With two Ns."

Walter scanned the page, "Only two more." He didn't look away from the neatly written words when Alucard hopped onto the desk, placing his bum inches away from the paper.

"And then you will do something more interesting with me."

Walter met the vampire's glowing red eyes and shook his head. "No, and then I have work to do. Unlike you, I have other things to do in between hunting trips." He ignored the answering pout. "The next word is 'lubricious.'"

"'Salace,'" Alucard answered with ill grace, kicking his feet against the desk while Walter wrote.

Walter glanced up from the page and smiled. "Here's your favorite word," and also the one that he was having the most trouble with, "'epicene.'"

"Epicene?" Walter didn't buy Alucard's innocent smile for a moment. "I don't seem to remember that word. Refresh my memory?"

"Effeminate."

"No, there was something more to it than that, wasn't there?" The vampire leaned down, bringing his face closer to Walter's.

"It also means having an ambiguous sexual identity."

"Now why do you suppose that Arthur wanted you to learn that word?"

"I don't honestly care; I just want to get this done. I have _real_ work to do." He tapped the end of his pencil gently on the tip of Alucard's nose. "Do you know the word or not?"

Alucard casually snatched the pencil out of Walter's fingers and tapped the young man's nose in return. "Why should I tell you? You're just going to go back to work and I'll go back to sitting around waiting for something interesting to do."

"Because you want to be helpful?" Walter held out his hand for the pencil, knowing that being helpful really wasn't on Alucard's list of priorities, which was confirmed by the vampire's headshake.

"Not good enough. I want payment this time."

_Payment? _ "I'm not donating blood for a vocabulary word."

"No, your blood is definitely worth more than one word." Alucard pushed the page away and shifted over on the desk until he sat directly in front of Walter. "But it is a French word, so a kiss in payment seems only fitting."

Walter closed his eyes in a slow blink and tried not to look as surprised as he felt.

One kiss, and then Walter could get back to work. He'd been unable to find a fitting word in French for epicene. Efféminé just wasn't quite right and he hadn't found anything better. There were few things Walter Dornez hated more than leaving work unfinished.

One kiss for one word.

"Alright." He glanced over his shoulder at the open library door, which slammed abruptly closed.

"You wanted privacy, didn't you?"

Walter could hear the satisfaction in the vampire's question and pressed his lips together in suppressed irritation. "Yes." The last thing he needed was for some maid to wander by and tell the entire household that she'd seen the butler kissing the vampire.

"That's hardly the right attitude for approaching a first kiss, is it?" Alucard slid off the desk and into Walter's lap, straddling him on the chair.

A first kiss. That presupposed that there would be kisses to follow. Walter tried to ignore Alucard's slight weight on his legs and the sudden way his heart sped up at the thought of kissing his companion.

Alucard leaned forward to whisper in his ear. "Kisses involve lips pressed together, Angel."

"One kiss for one word and then you leave me alone to get my work done."

"That's what we agreed." Walter shivered at the voice in his ear and shuddered when the vampire drew his cold tongue over his neck. "One kiss." He pulled back and smiled at Walter.

Well, how many people could say that their first kiss was with a five hundred year old vampire? Walter swallowed, suddenly much more aware of the weight on his lap, and slowly leaned forward to press his lips gently against Alucard's.

His first impression was that they were cool and soft, but then Alucard twined his arms around Walter's neck and pulled himself against the young man's body. Without thinking about it, Walter put his arms around Alucard to hold him there. When the vampire parted his lips, Walter took the invitation to taste him, tentatively drawing his tongue over Alucard's and stiffening in his seat when Alucard moaned quietly against his mouth.

Walter pulled back, trying not to pant or give Alucard any outward sign of how stirred he was by the kiss. He took a slow breath before saying, "There. One kiss," in a slightly choked voice.

Alucard gave him a quick peck on the lips and slid off his lap. "One kiss," he agreed with a smug grin, walking away.

The door opened for Alucard as he approached it. He called over his shoulder as he flounced out, "The word you are looking for is bisexué." 


	3. German

Walter stared at the page in front of him and opened yet another dictionary. French had been far easier than German to get a handle on, and the young man was beginning to feel very tired of hunting down the same words year after year. 

General language studies were one thing, but why did Arthur periodically come by with the same absurd list of vocabulary for his butler to learn? Arthur didn't have the attention span to carry a joke out over several years, as this one had gone on, so what was his game?

Walter put the questions aside in favor of searching for the last few words that seemed to plague him in any language.

"Aren't you finished yet?" A round white hat sailed over his head and landed on the desk next to Walter's hand. "I'm waiting for you."

_Every. Single. Time, _ Walter thought with a grimace. He shook his head without turning to look at Alucard and kept flipping through pages. "No. I can't find these. There isn't a direct translation and I don't know which would be closest."

"Do it when we get back. You said that you would escort me."

The petulant tone made him laugh – it was so blatantly manipulative. Walter turned around to face the vampire who stood in the library door. "London isn't going anywhere." Looking his companion over, Walter shook his head slightly and suppressed a smile; it took a monster who was completely sure of himself to wear that pale lavender suit.

Walter had grown into a strangely graceful, if lanky, seventeen year old, and still the vampire kept to the petite, feminine appearance that he had adopted soon after Walter first joined Hellsing five years before. The youth sometimes wondered if Alucard subtly shifted details of his appearance to be more appealing to him, or if Alucard was just growing on Walter in ways he probably should have expected, but hadn't.

He had also found himself wondering if the shining blue-black hair that hung down Alucard's back was as soft as it looked, which was a ridiculous thing to think about any vampire – let alone one of Alucard's power.

Ah, but he'd once _kissed_ a vampire of Alucard's power, hadn't he? Walter turned around and stared down at the word list. Even thinking about that single kiss brought back the memory full force and he stared fixedly at the open dictionary until the faint heat faded from his cheeks.

"London isn't going anywhere, but the night is." Walter didn't jump when Alucard's voice came from directly next to his ear. The vampire leaned over the young man's shoulder, ostensibly looking at Walter's paper and the book open in front of him.

"You could help me, then we'd be able to leave more quickly."

"I've helped you with these words before. I don't like repeating myself and you shouldn't count on me for help all the time, anyway." Alucard leaned in close enough for the breath from his words to tickle Walter's cheek. "Unless… you have some way to make it worth my time?"

Walter turned his head to look into Alucard's glowing, and very amused, red eyes. "I'll give your coffin a good waxing."

"I'd prefer giving it a good buffing." Alucard rubbed his nose over Walter's and smiled sweetly until the young man abruptly stood.

"Maybe you should go into London without me tonight. It seems I'll be busy here for the rest of the evening." He walked away from the desk and stack of books already there and pulled another book off a library shelf.

Alucard picked his hat up off the desk and settled it on his head with a huff. "As you wish, but the longer you wait, the harder it's going to be to make it worth my while to help you."

Walter grunted a reply, making a great show of being terribly absorbed in a book he had pulled off the shelf at random. He waited until Alucard had left to let out a shaky sigh before looking for a book that would actually be useful. He did not want to have to resort to tracing these last few words' etymology in search of a reasonable option.

This would be so much easier if he were less of a perfectionist.

•••

"Alright. What would make it worth your while?"

Alucard cocked his head at Walter and let a slow smile spread across his face. Walter had finally come to him. This gave him the upper hand in all ways, since they were also on his home ground – his room.

The vampire had been sitting, dwarfed in his large, almost throne-like chair when the door to his chamber had swung open under Walter's knocking hand. The contrast emphasized how small Alucard was, made him look even more fragile and harmless.

But the smile – the gleaming white teeth revealed by that smile were just a touch too sharp to look harmless. Walter was glad of that; it helped him remember whom he was dealing with.

"What would make it worth my while? After you wasted hours of our evening when you should have come to your senses earlier?" Alucard slid down from the chair and padded silently across the room to the young man still standing in the doorway. "I told you that the longer you waited, the harder it would be to appease me."

The vampire tugged on the bottom of Walter's waistcoat, pulling him the rest of the way into the room before the door slowly swung shut behind him.

"No matter how annoying leaving this undone might be, I'm not going to feed you for some vocabulary words." Walter felt as though he had to make that completely clear. It was like making a deal with the devil – you needed to read all the fine print or your soul would be gone before you knew it.

"Feed me?" Alucard toyed with the bottom button of Walter's waistcoat and ostentatiously contemplated those two words. "No. I think you will." He smiled and turned his face up to Walter, eyes shining with malicious humor. "I think that it would appease me perfectly."

Walter caught Alucard's two tiny hands in one of his and removed them from his waistcoat only to have the vampire twist in his grip and slide his chill fingers over Walter's gloved palm and bare fingertips. "You aren't getting my blood for Arthur's ridiculous word choices."

"Oh no," Alucard's fingers tightened over Walter's and the young man could feel the barest intimation of the inhuman strength hiding behind that delicate façade. "Your blood is still more valuable than that, but that doesn't mean you can't feed me." The vampire pulled on Walter's hand to make him bend down to his level and murmured in the young Angel of Death's ear, "You know I prefer my blood warm."

Alucard vanished, leaving Walter free to stand up and look around. He was just brushing his shaggy hair out of his face and heading for the door when the vampire reappeared in front of him. Alucard held one of the glass bottles that were used for blood collection and storage for the medical needs of Hellsing's troops, and the nutritional needs of Hellsing's vampire.

"If you want to finish your work, and I know you do, you will feed me." Alucard held up the bottle and tilted it back and forth to watch the crimson liquid slide down the bottle's walls. He looked at Walter through the glass, eyes twinkling with a mischief made hellish by their red glow. "You should have taken me into London as you said you would."

"Do you want me to snap a nipple on the top and hold you like a baby?" Walter took the bottle out of Alucard's hand and looked at the contents. Well, at least the vampire wasn't asking for another kiss. That was a good thing, right?

Right?

Alucard plucked the paper out of Walter's other hand and looked over what he had so far. "I'll even give you a bit of free help." He turned another of his faux-innocent looks on Walter, "Because I like you."

He pointed to the page. "You have 'Prahlerei' here for rodomontade. A better word choice is 'bramarbasieren.' And here, 'Spitzname' is an adequate selection, but 'Ehrenname' is better. German is a very precise language, after all."

Eyes scanning the page, Alucard stopped and shook his head, "'Schmierig?' Do you really think that Arthur was interested in the word lubricious because of its meaning as slippery? Really, 'schamlos' is a better choice, but knowing Arthur, 'schlüpfrig' is what he is looking for. He's more perverted than slippery, after all.

"Which brings us back to that last problem word… What are you going to do about 'epicene,' Angel? Are you going to feed me?" Alucard indicated the bottle in Walter's hand. "Or are you going to leave your work unfinished?" He took a step closer to Walter and gave the paper back to him. "Incomplete?" Another step and he stood nearly touching the young butler. "Imperfect?"

Alucard had his number, didn't he? Walter shrugged and nodded down at the vampire. "Yes, I'll feed you. How did you expect me to do it?" There was only so bad it could get since it wasn't his blood involved.

"I want it warm." Alucard's fingers were back on the buttons of Walter's waistcoat, this time sliding over them and leaving the garment open. "I want you to warm it for me."

Walter watched in a sort of stunned fascination as those tiny fingers moved on to slipping the buttons of his shirt out of their holes, finally dropping the page in his hand to the floor to catch Alucard's hands when he reached up to loosen Walter's tie. _ "What_ are you doing?"

"You don't want to stain your clothes, do you?" Alucard remained stretched to reach Walter's collar and took the half step forward needed to press himself against the taller man. "How did you think you were going to warm the blood for me?"

"I…"

"Didn't think about that part?" Alucard slipped Walter's grip with no difficulty and made short work of his tie. "You should think of all the details before making deals with the devil, Angel."

Walter's eyes widened to hear his thoughts mirrored back at him that way.

"Now, am I going to take your trousers off to keep them from getting bloody, or are you going to lie down to help me with my meal?"

_Lie down? _ Walter glanced around the mostly bare stone chamber; his choices were the floor, or maybe, if Alucard was feeling particularly perverse, the coffin.

Or he could take his trousers off, leaving himself almost completely exposed. Walter swallowed hard when his throat and stomach tightened at the prospect. No. Definitely not a good idea. Not if he wanted to be able to say no about the things that were really important.

"Take this." Walter gave Alucard the bottle of blood and removed his shirt and waistcoat, hanging them over the back of Alucard's "throne." He looked around again, mind whirling with objections, fears, attractions, and the occasional incongruous thoughts about cold stone against his back and how much he hoped no one ever learned of what he was going to do.

He could feel Alucard's eyes on him, crawling touches over his exposed skin. Walter straightened his shoulders and held the vampire's gaze while he slowly sat down on the floor. This was his choice, there would be no whining, or second-guessing, and he definitely would not be showing fear.

"Well? Are you going to stand there watching me forever, or are you going to come have your meal?" Walter still wasn't certain exactly what Alucard had in mind, but clearly it was going to get a bit messy. Fortunately, blood didn't bother Walter in the slightest.

What did bother Walter was the cold stone against his bare skin when Alucard pushed him back until he was supine on the floor. And when Alucard plopped himself down on top of Walter to straddle him, Walter was bothered far more, because they were touching in a manner that was much more intimate than he had agreed to.

"No, I agreed to help you with your meal. I didn't agree to getting schlüpfrig with you." Walter grabbed Alucard's hips and shifted his position until their contact was less… stimulating. "Now, for someone who was complaining about wasted time, you're wasting quite a lot of it yourself."

"Didn't anyone ever tell you that rushing your meal is bad for your digestion?" Alucard stripped the seal on the bottle and held it up to his nose to make a show of sniffing the contents.

Walter barked a short laugh and rolled his eyes. "You must be joking. You forget, I've seen the way you can eat. I don't think that the entirety of London would be enough to upset your digest-" His last word was cut off in a hiss as Alucard tilted the bottle and cold blood hit his chest in a slow drizzle.

"See. You don't like it cold, either." Alucard's giggle held a malevolent undertone. "Now just let that warm up for a moment, and while we wait, I'll help you with your other problem." He held out a hand and the dropped and forgotten piece of paper fluttered off the floor into his grasp. "Epicene. It's such a brilliant word in English, so subtle, but with such depth of meaning.

"As I said, German is a very precise language, which is why you're having so much difficulty with a translation. The subtleties get lost." Alucard leaned down and swiped his tongue down the center of Walter's chest, hearing the young man's pulse speed up immediately. He slowly licked away every drop of blood, making small sounds in the back of his throat at the savor of warm blood flavored by its contact with Walter's body.

When Walter's skin was once again spotlessly clean, Alucard sat up and smiled lazily at him. "This is much better. You may serve me my meals like this as often as you wish." He didn't wait for Walter's response before picking up the bottle and pouring more of its contents out onto his skin. This time blood collected in the hollow of Walter's throat and flowed down the sharp delineations in the muscles of his chest and abdomen, to pool in his navel.

Walter curled his toes inside his shoes and cleared his throat before he could speak. "What… What do you suggest as a proper translation?" He worked to focus on his reason for being there, and not on what was happening while a vampire sat on top of him to lick blood warmed by his body off his bare skin.

"The easy way out is 'zweideutige sexuelle Identität,' but is it the most accurate choice? You are trying to find a single word in German to replace a single word in English."

Alucard ceased speaking in favor of sliding down Walter's body to drink from the hollow of his navel, working his way slowly up the young man's torso to finish with the blood that shivered with the pulse that beat in the dip between his clavicles.

More blood was poured out and cleaned away; slowly the level of fluid in the bottle went down until Alucard poured the last drops out onto Walter's skin. The young man was trembling, partly with the cold from the stone floor that had seeped into him, making his bones ache, partly from the desire that was impossible to ignore after allowing Alucard to lavish such attention on his body.

He drew a slow breath while the blood warmed against his skin. "We're nearly done here. Are you going to give me the word yet?"

"You are single-minded. Most people would have forgotten why they were here by now."

"I'm not most people. That's why you keep chasing after me, isn't it?" Walter drew his fingers down over Alucard's thighs before putting his hands flat on the floor where he'd kept them while Alucard had his meal.

The last of the blood took the longest for Alucard to clean away; he took his time slowly following the sharp lines of muscle in the young man's abdomen, swirled his tongue over Walter's nipples, and stopped with his mouth over the racing pulse point in the man's neck.

Neither moved for several long minutes – long enough for the feather-light pressure of Alucard's fangs on Walter's throat to make his skin crawl. "Doppelgeschlechtig is good," Alucard finally said, lips moving against the young man's neck. "It's slightly ambiguous. Epicene is a somewhat ambiguous word in English." Alucard drew back and nipped gently at Walter's jaw. "But I still prefer 'bisexuell.' It works in English, French, and German. What a wonderfully universal word."

"Thank you. That's what I needed. Now if you'll let me up? The floor is rather chilly." Walter propped himself up on his elbows and waited for Alucard to get off him.

Instead the vampire leaned down to whisper in Walter's ear, "Let this be something you never forget, Angel. It's not the size of your opponent that matters, but whether he knows your weak points."

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_AN: The plastic blood storage bag was not invented until 1947, and wasn't introduced into widespread use until at least 1948. Given that Walter is seventeen in this chapter, it is 1947 and they have to be satisfied with the glass bottles that were in use at the time._

_My thanks to darkfather66 for his assistance with the German vocabulary. French was easy; German, not so much so, and I greatly appreciate his help._

_Oh yes, I nearly forgot. The next chapter - and there _will_ be one more - will have to be put up at adultfanfiction . net, so look there for Dutch.  
_


	4. Dutch

_I guess you can call this a teaser, although it could stand alone adequately. The entirety of chapter four is posted with the preceding three chapters at adultfanfiction dot net. There is a link to my aff net profile in my profile here, just click my name.

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_

"Dutch?"

Walter intercepted Alucard's hand before the vampire could close the book he was using.

"Not today, Alucard. I'm busy."

"Oh?" Alucard leaned over the desk and craned his head around to look at Walter's papers. "Business or pleasure? It must be business." For just a moment, Alucard's pretty face twisted in a sneer. "What pleasure is there to be had in Dutch?"

Walter raised an eyebrow. "Your mask is slipping." That didn't happen often, but the young butler had a reasonable idea why Dutch would not be Alucard's favorite language.

The young man watched the vampire compose his face into the harmless-seeming façade he stayed behind most of the time. He suspected that he was one of the only people alive to have seen that façade crumble and live to remember it.

Well, time to test his theory about living through the slippage…

Walter slid a book from under the huge volume of the Dutch-English dictionary and watched Alucard's face carefully. He was unsurprised to see the vampire's visage contort again. "Van Helsing's journal. What does old Abraham's journal have to do with your other language studies?"

"You don't know?" Walter looked at Alucard with honest surprise. "I thought you knew." He pulled several pages out of the stack next to him and looked them over before flipping open van Helsing's journal. He read the Dutch aloud, "Dit wezen verbaast me met zijn vasthoudendheid. Ondanks mijn beste inspanningen, blijft hij een onhandelbaar beest, _glad_ en verleidelijk."

Walter looked up and raised an eyebrow at Alucard, "You tried with Abraham, too." He read again, slowly this time, translating the Dutch to English on the fly. "This creature amazes me in his tenacity. Despite my best efforts, he remains a wanton beast, _lubricious_ and enticing."

He held up a page covered in his tidy handwriting and began to read, "Diese Kreatur begeistert mich in ihrer Hartnäckigkeit. Trotz meiner stärksten Bemühungen bleibt sie ein zügelloses Biest, _schlüpfrig_ und verlockend."

He pulled a page from a separate stack and read again, "Cette créature me stupéfie dans sa ténacité. En dépit de mes meilleurs efforts, il reste une bête dévergondée, _lubrique_ et attirant."

"Do you see now?" Walter held the pages out for Alucard to look at. "Arthur wants it translated, but he doesn't want to trust anyone outside the organization to do it."

"Why translate it into German and French in addition to English?"

"Hellsing isn't the only organization that hunts vampires, Alucard. You know that as well as I do. Arthur said something about 'information sharing.'"

Walter flipped through a few more pages and read, "I have chosen the sobriquet Alucard. He is no longer Dracula, he is a servant of the greater good. As I have reversed his role, I choose to reverse his name as a reminder to us all."

Walter snorted softly, deliberately not looking away from the page to gauge Alucard's reaction. "Was he prone to melodrama?"

"He was a vampire hunter in an age when most people didn't know what vampires were." Alucard's tone was unreadable. "And a master of rodomontade, since you ask."

Walter raised an eyebrow, but let the vampire's spiteful words go without comment. After turning a few more pages, Walter read again, "He was a man when we vanquished him, at least in appearance. Why is his figure now so epicene?" He glanced up at Alucard as he turned the page, almost smiling. "Actually, the word he used translates more as 'androgynous,' but I've grown partial to 'epicene.'"

Returning his attention to his reading, Walter slowly translated, "I cannot take his attempts to seduce me any longer. Every day he seems to look more like my wife did before her illness. I no longer even know if it is a male or female beast I command."

_ "Enough." _ Alucard slapped his hand down on the page and bent forward to glare at Walter. "Does it please you to know how Abraham humbled me?" His usually pretty features were contorted and bestial, eyes glowing fiercely in a face Walter barely recognized.

The young man met the raging vampire's stare with an equanimity he didn't feel. "No. It doesn't please me to think of you in those circumstances." He leaned forward in his seat, bringing his face near Alucard's and watched him begin to calm in the face of Walter's own composure. "Nor does it please me to think of other people reading what I have read," he admitted. "But we both serve here and that's the long and the short of it."

Walter began to square the pages on the desk and considered his next move. It was going to be better for household tranquility if he put this on hold while Alucard calmed down. No doubt the maids would thank him if he could keep the vampire from putting on his hellhound guise and wandering the halls. They lost more good help that way.

He could feel Alucard's eyes on him while he put the translated pages and van Helsing's journal into a drawer and locked it, but he didn't look up until he was finished. At least the vampire was no longer snarling, although his eyes were still glowing with the force of his anger.

Walter made an elaborate show of stretching while he made his decision, then picked up the dictionary and rose to put it back on the shelf. He turned and leaned against the bookshelf, looking at Alucard. "You don't want to _stay_ angry about the journal, do you?"

"And if I do?" Alucard's lower lip was coming very close to protruding in a pout, which made Walter purse his lips against a smile.

"Then we won't be doing anything together this evening, will we?"

"I will need distracting to put this behind me." Where moments before had snarled a creature to frighten most sane men, now stood a petite, androgynous figure with the smiling face of an innocent and lambent red eyes that promised hell.

Walter exhaled a silent laugh at that. "For years you've interrupted my language studies and distracted me from my work; why would we change the pattern now?"

"Do you have words that you need assistance with? Lubricious didn't seem to give you difficulty. Nor epicene, from what you read to me." Alucard looked up at Walter through his lashes and smiled, "Something difficult that I could charge for?"

"No, no words. At least none that have anything to do with Abraham's journal or anything Arthur has asked me to learn. But surely someone with so much more experience than I would have a few words to teach me?"

* * *

_AN: __My thanks to darkfather66 for his assistance with the German vocabulary. My thanks to Boemkool for her help with Dutch vocabulary and sentence translation. Thanks also to LiveJournal's Kodaishi and Rattgirl for their help with the German sentence translation.  
_


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